Giles walked on slowly, smoking. The electricity in the air, the intense stir of life around him, made upon his tired and unaccustomed faculties a profound impression. He felt benumbed, like a man in a nightmare. At Piccadilly Circus he stopped, and stood, staring about him. A brake filled with a pleasure party passed close. Girls leaning out of it swung in their hands coloured lanterns, which lit up their flushed faces and disordered hair. It was gone in a medley of song-snatches, rattling hoofs, empty laughter, and twinkling lights. A string of policemen filed by, solemn and bulky, each one a ridiculous embodiment of the earnestness of life. Out of the blare and turmoil of the street a fire-engine charged towards him, swaying from side to side, with the thunder of wheels and a harsh incessant shouting.
As he stood there a woman touched him on the arm and leered up at him; some one blew a whiff of tobacco in his face; black-hatted, shiny-booted men languidly held the pavement with gingerly steps; in front of him the coloured letters of an advertisement went in and out; newspaper men, like ghouls battening meagrely upon the misfortunes of other people, yelled dismally; and the bells of cabs and bicycles sounded swiftly, vanishing into chaos on this side and that. Coming after the silence of lonely places, it was strange. Every one had something to do, and was doing it with solemn fury; even the drunken man lurching at the gutter was earnestly drunk. It was curious after the south; yet instinctively, and without thinking about it, he understood it very well, much better than all that he had lived with for so many years. At this moment, with nothing to do but wait, kill time, and deaden the suspense in his mind, he was waiting very earnestly. He was of the same blood and the same grain as all that mass of humanity around him, which surged ceaselessly to and fro upon its business.
With an effort he roused himself, and made his way across Piccadilly. He formed the resolution, suddenly, to put an end to his suspense. It would be too late to see Jocelyn in any event, but he could at least find out something about her, where she was, perhaps how she was. At all events it would kill some time. He chose the slowest means of progression, and climbed on to a Chelsea omnibus. He sat in front, leaning forward, with his long legs drawn back under the seat, his shoulders high and square, and his soft felt hat covering his forehead. As the ’bus rumbled along Piccadilly in the stream of the traffic, past a narrow red streak of stationed cab lights and the overhanging trees of the Green Park, the driver, a man with a permanent cold, looked round at him curiously. The tanned, drawn face, with its thin, black moustache above the set jaw, had a queer look to his insular eyes. He would have volunteered remarks, but, as he afterwards observed hoarsely to his mate—
“That furrin’ lookin’ gent as sat be’ind o’ me lawst trip ’ad a mug on ’im as dried the words in yer mouth. Looked as if ’e were kind o’ settin’ on ’ot bricks, ’e did, and knowed it too; a rum bird ’e was.”
“Right,” returned the mate, a cockney, “’e was English, though—asked me the w’y to Cheeyne Walk an’ giv’ me a bob—quite the gent—there ain’t too many of ’is sort abaout.”
“Oh! ay! A right eno’ gent—’igher rup!”
When Giles reached the Mansions he hesitated for some minutes before he found the courage to go in. At the sound of his footsteps upon the tiled floor, the porter, a large personage in blue, with a stolid red face, and an evening paper in his hand, appeared from a corner and stood under the hanging lamp, an illuminated image of matter-of-fact civility.
“What name, sir?” He had a voice that leapt out of him with unexpected brevity, and a habit of twitching one eyelid.
Giles felt suddenly cool, and unemotional, with the calmness peculiar to nervous organisations in critical moments.
“Does Mrs. Travis live here?” he said.